|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Information
Reviews Don't play this game., December 17, 2005 Rating: 2.0/10 By Mitch When did it become acceptable to produce a game without an original idea? Wow, a free roaming game taking place in Los Angeles. In a car. That is the epitome of "wow!" Whoever allowed Terri Shiavo to help make a video game before she died deserves to go the prison. Before LA Rush was released, they used a clever tactic to create an illusion that it's a good game: nice looking screenshots. Finally, after playing this, I have learned to never judge a book by its cover. At a couple points in playing this game, I was actually convinced its purpose was to be horrible. I truly believe the developers purposely made this game look good, and started laughing when horrible reviews began to show up. But hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm the only one who never enjoyed this game. Well, here's your opportunity to be the judge without playing the game (AKA wasting your time) yourself.
Can't guess what LA Rush stands for? Of course you can, it stands for "Los Angeles Rush," the newest addition in the Rush series, a once fairly decent arcade racing game that was present in every bowling alley in America, right next to Cruisin' World. I actually enjoyed Rush, and back then it was a racing game with every element it needed to be a success. However, LA Rush is a perfect example of how sequels with good ideas can murder the series and cause some orphans to cry. I'm very well convinced that the Pakistan earthquakes were the result of this game that God was truly upset at this game that he had to take it out on the people of the Middle East. The idea wasn't exactly original, but is originality in video games really important anymore? LA Rush takes two of the most popular game play elements today, and tries to mold it into one: street racing and free roaming. In fact, I'll start this off by explaining the good qualities of this racing game, because I'm aware that I'm that this is starting to become some sort of comedy-game-bashing review. LA Rush, being a free-roam game, does have some good freedom qualities in which I enjoyed, especially since it takes place in Los Angeles. The map scale is gigantic, and looks incredibly realistic, especially compared to True Crime's LA, which was just 7,000,000,000 streets that all looked the same. Unfortunately, I believe that the developers spent too much time on recreating Los Angeles in a virtual environment than concentrating on actual game play. The next enjoyable feature (... there's only two) are the brilliant car crashes in which you'll purposely be hammering into things just to see them happen. LA Rush, likes it previous game, has a very good sense of speed, and knows how to display an accident properly. Similar to Need For Speed: Underground, when a serious collision is caused, the camera slows down into a Matrix style mode from a far away angle and we get to witness the sheer damage that has been caused. Panels cave inwards; small particles are flung in every direction while either your car or the victim's car flips wildly in the air. The damage physics engine is nice, and I was rather impressed, because this is the type of damage every car driving game needs. Now, on to the bad, which is roughly, you know, everything.
LA Rush plays somewhat like The Fast and the Furious meets The O.C. We assume the role of a character by the name of "Trikz," who is an infamous street racer with a massive reputation for burning rubber. What I mean by The O.C. is this: he's a 20 year old looking boy with a gigantic mansion and a car collection that makes Jay Leno look like an amateur. This type of scenario would be better off as a hip-action-adventure TV show on MTV than it would an actual video game. Think about it, how juvenile can something really be? The man has the nickname "Trikz." What more could you really expect? It's actually more unrealistic than juvenile, and usually storylines don't stand in my way much, but something that horrible was actually making me angry. Anyway, the story begins when a rival racer by the name of Lidell, an annoying black kid who you want to run over a majority of the time, who hires some guys to rid Trikz' mansion of his rides which sets you out on a mission to get them back. This is better than the "work your way through the ranks of respect" scenario that just about every game uses now, but it really isn't much better, and you start to wonder how unrealistic things are really going to get. You'll start to wonder why Lidell would be willing enough to steal all of Trikz' cars rather than, you know, kill him? Oh yeah, because we need game play! Too bad a majority of game play aspects fail miserably which turns LA Rush into another game under the "crappy" genre.
Indeed, finding your cars generally revolves around racing. Of course, in real life, real street races don't revolve around doing hardcore, 10 lap circuit races around a city, but this is a video game, so that part is definitely a must. On your clocklike GTA-style map, you'll find different locations in which you can go to races in order to help locate your rides. Realistically, if this happened to 90% of people with the same amount of respect as Trikz, they'd most likely gather up a few men, break Lidell's legs, and force him to give the cars back. But no, Trikz does it his way, using racing methods to help get info one where his cars in. Keep in mind that all of his cars are gone, except for a slow Nissan that you'll be driving most of the time. To start a race, you'll usually have to pay an entry fee, which is incredibly annoying. The main problem with racing is that it's very challenging and simply not fun at all. I remember playing Need For Speed: Underground, and as I progressed deeper into the game, I began to become more and more frustrated. I felt the same way here, since one slight screw up will literally cost you the entire race. I can't stress how many times I've accidentally spun out of control, AT THE BEGINNING, and lost the whole race just because of that small, faulty move. Maybe it has something to do with the impossibly hard and unrealistic AI of the other racers. They always seem to be one step ahead, and their slower cars somehow manage to move incredibly faster than yours. They swerve in and out of heavy traffic, dodging every single pedestrian vehicle by half an inch, no matter how deep the obstacle is. They are also irritatingly violent. They have the ability to ram you off the road and force you to lose the race, but if you try to do the same to them you'll just end up failing and getting wasted anyway. To top all of this nonsense off, the LAPD have a trend of showing up at all the wrong times and disrupting your race. They don't realistically pull in behind you either, and try to gently fishtail you off the road. They all swarm in at once, up to seven squad cars at a time, and start to box you in. I have never been so embarrassed playing a video game in my life.
My biggest problem with this thing is the car customization. While cruising around, and if you feel like you want to change the appearance of whatever car you're currently driving, just find a West Coast Customs garage and cruise in. Do you get fully interactive menus to choose what you want your car to look like? No. Do you get to choose any aspect of what the finished product will look like? Absolutely not. The car will drive back out, looking completely different, something that you had not one single percentage of involvement in. When this happened the first few times, I seriously thought I had done something wrong. Maybe I hit the wrong button, or maybe it was just a glitch that seemed to happen 17 times in a row. Hey, what do you know, it was actually supposed to happen. There's no showing off your customized ride to your friends, like in NFS: UG where you were able to choose through a nearly countless selection of exterior modifications to have up to 20,000 different variations of a car. You and your friend will most likely have the exact same car and the exact boring game, and you both are going to feel the exact same pain and anguish that you were crazed enough to purchase LA Rush.
Don't buy it. Don't rent it. Don't even read this review. I'll pay you not to play it.
Similar Games
Buy It
From eBay:
From Amazon
|
|
|
|
|
Add to Collection
